Why, Again?

Here's what it looks like around here. Not today, exactly, but recently.

And yet, I'm vacating for a bit. Why is that, again?

Oh, yeah. People I love live elsewhere, too. Why, again?
Oh yeah. So I can visit them.
And then come home.

What is this Stuff?

I have written elsewhere about chocolate-oatmeal macaroons. (They are distressingly easy to make.) (And I am proud to report that I haven't made any this whole week.)

The recipe calls for margarine. Since I had never made them before, I actually used margarine, though I am not nuts about its flavo(u)r, or lack thereof.

Side note: last week on CBC's Rewind program, they played an interview from 1949 with Kate Aitken, in which both Kate and her Vancouver host discuss the "bone of contention" that they call "MARG-rin." Not "MAR-juh-rin." Hard "g," two syllables. The whole interview is here (the first option); marg-rin appears at about 5 minutes. The podcast as a whole is a fun little trip into 1949 post-war radio. The voices sound different in a way that can't all be ascribed to patronizing condescension toward domesticity.

Anyway. I challenge you: without examining the labels, pick out the "marg-rin" from the samples above.

Yup. It's the bronze-wrapped thing.

See, back in The Old Country, all butter or butter-esque products come in long sticks, like the one center-top, above. (Or in tubs, but we pretend they don't exist because they're usually margarine and we don't like it and you can't cook with the kind that comes in tubs because it's whipped and doesn't measure correctly.)

In The Old Country, many recipes call for "a stick of butter." Imagine my surprise when I came to Canada and discovered that butter comes in "sticks" like the one to the right. A stick that says, "We're a logging country. We don't mess around with little sticks. Here, have some butter." Cutting 1/4 or 1/2 cup off that log o' butter is a different experience.

Fortunately, the powers that package marg-rin in Canada are aware of all those recipes. That square hockey puck thing is a half-cup, which makes it the Canadian equivalent to "a stick of margarine."

Logs o' butter, pucks o' marg-rin. Oh Canada.

Ah, you say, but isn't that thing at the top also a stick of butter? Yes, it is. But also, it is not. It is a product made by Lactantia, a Parmalat company. This particular product is a "butter" called "My Country." It is an unsalted, uncultured product with a "distinctive European flavour." This particular version is "Swiss flavour."

You know how the Swiss like their butter? Without flavo(u)r. Maybe it tastes like fat, but not in a particularly satisfying way. (I came into some of this product when our renters left and donated the contents of their fridge. I'm not sure what I'm going to do with it.)

I am a fan of butter. That is, I'm a fan of the kind of butter that tastes like something, and I don't want to hear how that "something" is added salt and chemicals required by some process or other. I don't care. I love the butter like the stuff to the right in the picture, stuff that has the taste from The Old Country. The kind that, in this country, comes in a big inconveniently shaped log.

Did I mention the inconvenience of the shape? Try cutting a piece to put into one of those butter dishes. The butter dishes of which we have several in this house. Yes, you'll find you're cutting a piece that's...the shape of a U.S.-style stick of butter.

I know. The log o' butter means less packaging. (One piece of foil, no cardboard box.) But dealing with it dirties at least one knife, and my fingers, every single time.

I also recognize that the butter dishes that are ubiquitous in this house were likely manufactured and imported as part of a trade agreement with The Old Country. Still. Logs o' butter do not lend themselves to pieces that fit into them.

At least the butter, the REAL butter, tastes good.

I didn't say this was earth-shattering stuff. When you're on vacation, something like this may be cute and interesting and a bit quaint. But when you're a resident, a permanent one, this stuff requires mental adjustments. And, like the oven wars of 2007, it's these little things in the New Country that are the most surprising and disconcerting.

Like finally finding a stick of butter, only to discover it doesn't taste like butter.

Or mentally changing your idea of a "butter dish" so that the dish resembles a small plate, because it's easier to saw an appropriately shaped piece off the log to fit a plate.

It's almost enough to make one wish for a batch of chocolate-oatmeal macaroons, just to take the edge off. Fortunately, the hockey pucks come in packages of 12. (Yes, 12 pucks of marg-rin to a box!) We've had only three batches of macaroons so far. Hmmm.

Red means "Stop"

Around here, sometimes red means "pretty."

But.

Sometimes it means "stop." As in, "Here's the edge of your property."

Metaphorically, in my life these days there's too much of the second kind of red: as in "No."
Or at least the wrong kind of "Yes."
But perhaps that's just my perspective at this moment.
Perhaps it will change.


At least I still get to live here. Well, not here exactly, but darn close.
Yesss!!!

Spelling as a Political Act

Lately, I've been having what I have come to think of as Sherman Alexie moments. That is, those moments in which I feel "between cultures."

One of those between-culture moments has to do with language, perhaps not surprisingly, given what I do. As you might expect from an American living in Canada and working with words, I have had to create some mental rules around spelling.

When I write something, I use the spelling that the audience expects. American clients expect "color," and Canadians expect "colour." Great. That's easy. Usually, with the guidance of MS Word's language default setting and my own reading of Canadian periodicals, I can get it right. This rule works even in the creative work I'm writing more of nowadays: if it's designed for Canadian audiences, it gets Canadian spelling.

On Facebook, I've adopted some practices, mostly to see how they work. For example, I celebrated "Labour Day" this year because I celebrated it in Canada. When I converse online with American friends, I tend to "type American"; for Canadians, I "type Canadian."

You've seen me use parentheses on the blog here for things like
"favo(u)rite." It's a way to type "between cultures." Hey, we're an inclusive place here.

But then I wondered: when I'm just me, writing just for me, what do I use?

And THEN I wondered: when on earth do I write "just for me"?

The answer is, I don't. Even the journaling I do will be read by someone other than the writer. Even if that "someone" is some future version of me--well, that version of me won't be the same person that I am at the "now" in which I write.

This also ties in with something I first heard discussed in graduate school: writing is a powerful act. One of my professors said his favorite (he was American) students were those he taught in a penitentiary. They were extremely motivated to learn. Learning to read and write effective arguments could help with their appeals and help them gain parole. For them, writing was highly personal, political, powerful.

I was more recently reminded when listening to CBC's Sunday morning news program, which featured a panel discussion about language issues, that even spelling is political. Someone on the panel mentioned Noah Webster, who of course is famous for changing the spellings of words such as "center," "defense," and "traveler." He did it for unashamedly ideological reasons: American English should be different from British English.

So, I am tempted to say, "Oh for crying out loud, this is not a big deal." Except that it is. Language and identity are so closely related as to be inseparable. It gets to Sherman Alexie's statement that whoever lives between cultures eventually is at home in neither.

Is spelling going to be my measuring stick? (Notice how I avoided using "yardstick"?)

If so, I guess it's time to take a baseline measurement. At present, the default setting for my spelling is still American. I wonder how much longer that will be true.

There and Back Again

Seasons on the calendar are closer than they appear.

The sun slants differently.

The water level in the lake is dropping again.
It's less cause for concern than in May--the renters are leaving soon,
and in any case, Roy's fix kept it fixed.

This pretty much says it all.

And so, we walk home again.

Rhyming Risks

"The past is not dead. It's not even past."

William Faulkner was onto something. Twenty-five years ago, my sister and mother looked at each other across a dish of wild mushrooms, gathered from our property here. The mushroom expert was an artist, married to the musician who was also writing a biography of my uncle (see the link to Sackbut Blues at left).

The mushrooms were meant as food, by the way, not a mind-blowing experience. Although they proved to be one in their own way, I guess.

My mother was wary. My sister was wary. But each watched the other take mushrooms, to be polite, and take a bite. Later, each said, "I only ate it because YOU did!"

The mushrooms were fine. My mother and sister were fine. But the lengths people go to, just to be polite! Holy cow.

Despite this ultimately positive experience, our family did not turn into "eat off the land" food gurus.

Yesterday a neighbour brought me a dish of risotto with parmesan and wild mushrooms. The wild mushrooms has been gathered from the "fairy ring" in our back yard.

I looked at her. "You've eaten some of this?" She assured me she had. "You're not dead?" She was not.

So I ate a bite. And of course, they were fabulous. Well, the risotto was great; what's not to love about creamy, cheesy ricey stuff? And the mushrooms were good. I like mushrooms. I suffered no ill effects.

But geez, the lengths people will go to, just to be polite.

The past isn't dead, and neither am I. So far.

The Hour without Power

We've had one this morning. I was in mid-post, too.

But fortunately, we've had only the one.
(So far, I add, trying to walk the line between guarded optimism and "sucker!!".)

There's a leak into my office--not a bad one, and it's stopped.
(For now, I add, ditto with the guarded optimism.)

Anyway, it's like this here today.

Oh, and the kids go (back) to school today.
Wonder how many believe the sky is crying just for them.

Trans-Canada Geography

This morning, on my way into town to run an early errand, I passed a van pulled into a...pull-into-thingy, as I call it...along the side of the road. The van was white, with an orange-gold-yellow-red flame/sun/bright design on it (I was driving at highway speeds so can't be more specific) and had a sign that said, in big letters, SAD.

I chuckled at the contrast between lettering and colouring. But I also knew what it was: a guy is biking across Canada to raise awareness of seasonal affective disorder (SAD).

We see a lot of those vans supporting folks biking/walking/running across Canada. Most notably, Terry Fox, whose attempt to run trans-Canada sadly ended near the city.

You might be surprised that everyone comes through Thunder Bay. Especially when you think about these numbers:

1. Canada, east-west, about 5514 kilometres (3300+ miles)
2. Canada, north-south, about 4634 km (2780+ miles)
3. U.S., east-west (continental), 4500 km (2800 miles)
4. U.S., north-south (continental), 3300 km (2000 miles)

Yes, give or take, depends on where you measure, yeah, yeah, all of that.

Your take-away: Canada is a honking big country--with one highway crossing it. ONE. Cleverly called the Trans-Canada highway (though it goes by lots of numbers), it comes right through Thunder Bay.

This is not to say that Canada has only one highway everywhere. One of my main objections to Toronto (or the GTA as we likes to say) is that it's all paved over. However, for much of the east-west breadth of this country, one road is all you get.

North-south, you got...nuthin', mostly. Yes, you can drive into Alaska, but that's, again, one highway, out west. Much of the country's north-south travel is by plane.

There are stories of bridges (train and now car) that, if demolished by acts of violence--say, a bomb in World War II or, in today's terms, an act of terrorism--would cripple the movement of people and goods from east to west. Of course, assuming the violence isn't perpetrated by Americans, Canadians could still GET from points east to points west, but they'd have to go through the U.S.

Which they would do, for the shopping.

My point is that Thunder Bay in many ways feels remote, isolated--one of the famed "ends of the earth." (Tell that to people in Sioux Lookout or a fly-in community. This is their "big city," their shopping destination.) However, it's really right smack in the middle of things, which makes it kind of a fun place to be.

(Cue Ontario Tourism music.)